Catseye Read Free Page A

as if a very soft, inquiring paw had been drawn lightly along his arm to test the quality of his skin, the strength of his muscles, the toughness of the bone beneath that covering. Just so did he feel that something had very lightly touched what was his inner self in exploration. Touched—and flashed instantly away—so that the sensation was cut off almost the same moment that he was aware of it. Troy helped Zul boost the cage onto the platform. There was no feeling of movement from within—nothing at all. Had there ever been?

TWO
    The cage was stowed with extra care just behind the driver’s seat in the flitter, and during the transfer from warehouse to flyer there had been not the slightest sound from its interior. Yet twice more Troy had been aware of those paw taps of exploration, touches that were gone the instant he was alert to them. He was thinking hard as he left Zul in the flitter and went to return the platform. The other had shown no signs of surprise or interest in the cage. Did Zul find those subtle inquiries ordinary—or did he not feel them at all? What kind or species of animal traveled in that container?
    Native life on a thousand worlds was now known to spacers, explorer scouts, pioneers. And Troy had heard tales told in the Dipple by men gathered from planets in a wide sector of the galaxy. Yet never before had there been any suggestion that a form of life existed that was able to contact men mentally. Mentally!
    Troy paused. Mentally! So—that was it! He had put a name to that elusive touch. But—
    He did not know that his eyes had narrowed, that his fingers were drumming a faint tattoo on his belt. This was something to consider by himself. Out of the far past an emotion other than surprise awoke, sent a warning through him. Look, listen, and keep one’s thoughts to oneself—the law of survival.
    Troy swung around so suddenly that he caught the slight movement of a man he must have startled into that tiny betrayal. Varms stood just outside, his elbow resting on a pile of boxes, obviously waiting for orders. Yet he had been watching Troy, just as he was so patently not watching him now. Did Varms expect Horan to spark a patroller? He knew the inner laws of the Dipple better than that. As long as Varms made no move toward looting Kyger’s, where Troy’s loyalty was temporarily pledged, Horan would not reveal any knowledge of him.
    He walked past Varms without a sign, heading toward the flitter. It was only chance that dictated the next warning. A porter was wrangling with one of the bin attendants, and they now carried their quarrel to the section manager. Since the object of their dispute was large, they were hot-tonguing it, not in the inner office but outside in the corridor. A length of crystal mirror, bright and backed with red-gold, bore a disfiguring crack down its side.
    That crack might distort a reflection, but it could not conceal it. And in that patch of mirror Troy caught a glimpse of a tailer—Varms! The interest a new recruit of the Guild might have in a C.L. from the Dipple was negligible, but in a cargo—that was a different matter. And Varms, clumsy and inept as he was, might well be after the contents of the cage—or of the two crates that accompanied it.
    Troy came out into the brightness of the flitter park. There were rows of waiting vans, very few passenger flyers. A series of two-story patroller towers quartered the whole area. There must be spy rays throughout every lane here. No one had ever dared a highjacking job in this place. And he did not see how he and Zul could be tackled once they were in the air—If they had been on wheel lock, now—
    But he discovered that surface travel was just what Zul was intending. The wheels were extended from the body flaps, and the little man edged the vehicle out on ground level.
    â€œWhat’s the idea?” Troy folded his long legs into the cramped quarters beside Zul.